Instagram, FB set new rules of fashion

For the fashion conscious, pho to-sharing websites such as Instagram provide a means of swapping style tips and getting a headstart on the latest trends. But if everyone knows what outfit you wore last night, can you still wear the same thing next week?Chris Green | The Independent | July 29, 2015, 08:53 IST

For the fashion conscious, pho to-sharing websites such as Instagram provide a means of swapping style tips and getting a headstart on the latest trends. But if everyone knows what outfit you wore last night, can you still wear the same thing next week?For the fashion conscious, pho to-sharing websites such as Instagram provide a means of swapping style tips and getting a headstart on the latest trends. But if everyone knows what outfit you wore last night, can you still wear the same thing next week?

Young women are increasingly having to mix and match clothes to cope with the problem of "overexposure" in the age of the selfie, a phenomenon which is driving sales of skirts, tops and accessories and is having a profound effect on the fashion industry.

Camille Charriere, a 27-yearold fashion blogger who runs the website Camille Over The Rainbow, said she had first become aware of the issue "long ago" when people started to share photographs of their style on Facebook. "From the moment that people started uploading pictures of themselves or having people tag pictures of them, they started to pay more attention. There is a trend of people thinking `I don't want to wear this, because I've already been seen in that'," she said.

Around a third of women consider clothes to be "old" after wearing them fewer than three times, according to a study. One in seven blamed the effect of FB, Twitter and Instagram, saying they were uncomfortable being seen in same outfits more than once.

The rise of social media has "totally changed the way we consume fashion", said Ann Marie Kirkbride, lecturer at Northumbria University . "When I was a fashion student you had to wait for the magazines. Now we're living in real time, bombarded with images of fashion."